Anti-Britney Spears

In the May issue of Wired magazine, the Swedish pop star Robyn is hailed as the anti-Britney Spears: She's a good-looking blonde who happens to be a talented songwriter, she's uncompromising when it comes to producing chart-topping hits for a demanding label, and instead of making out with Madonna and divorcing K-Fed, she started her own label and carved out a long and respectable music career.

Anti-Britney Spears

It is striking to see how two charismatic, talented youngsters could start out along a similar path in the music business and end up in such dramatically different places. As Wired somewhat dramatically put it, their different choices "would lead one to hipster stardom and the other to madness."

While Robyn scored a mainstream hit with "Show Me Love" in the '90s, her artistic integrity led her down a different path from the mega-stardom Britney achieved, as she declined to tour with the Backstreet Boys and struck out on her own instead. I, for one, am glad — not just because we don't need another tragic Britney story but also because Robyn's music is different but still catchy. Her new video for a song called "Who's That Girl" seems appropriately timed for the Wired article, as the lyrics make clear she is interested in how we view certain girls in comparison to who they really are inside. Seems like Britney, and a whole host of other starlets, could have benefited from the same self-awareness, no?

What do you think? Is Robyn a welcome antidote to the pop-wreck that is Britney? To check out the totally fun video for "Who's That Girl" — and the wonderment that is Robyn's "Konichiwa B*tches"